A patterned recording medium for a digital data storage device such as a hard disk drive may include servo information for read-write head positioning in the hard disk drive. However, readback signals corresponding to the servo information may swing between a relatively high readback signal and a relatively low to zero readback signal rather than swinging between positive and negative readback signals of the same or about the same magnitude. A consequence of the foregoing may be reduced peak-to-peak amplitude in the servo sectors and DC baseline shifts when the read-write head moves from the servo sectors to data areas or data sectors and vice versa.